#I think this is the longest I’ve ever ranted about Damian

[maybeimamuppet]

The kisses prompt

#48

Cadnis

I beg you

hello my dear thank you for the ask

and also welcome to i think the longest “drabble” i’ve done so far hehe oops

48, kisses out of habit

Cady wakes up to her phone buzzing relentlessly on her nightstand. She groans as she rolls over onto her stomach and gropes around for it with one eye half-open. She winces at the brightness of the screen and scrambles to turn it down so she can actually see what it has to show her.

9:12 am. Still more texts coming in from Janis.

April 30.

They’re getting married today.

She swipes up and taps in her passcode, since her phone can’t recognize her sleepy face. Taps her way into her text thread with Janis.

babycakes: you are responsible for me just kissing damian on the fucking lips

babycakes: he’s yelling at me

babycakes: Sent a video: he really can multitask

babycakes: making pancakes and yelling at me at the same time

babycakes: I JUST DKDKING DID IT AGAIN

babycakes: I CAN NEVER TALK TO DAMIAN AGAIN

babycakes: i hope you’re happy with yourself

babycakes: oh my GOD

caddycat: Ok

caddycat: Back this truck up about ten miles

babycakes: I KISSED DAMIAN

babycakes: ON THE MOUTH

babycakes: T W I C E

caddycat: Congratulations

caddycat: And what does that have to do with me exactly?

babycakes: YOU

babycakes: dame let me have a sleepover in his bed

babycakes: and i forgot

babycakes: and i’m used to kissing u first thing when we wake up

babycakes: BUT IT WADNT YOU IT WASHIM AND I LISSED DAMIAN ON TEHMOUTH

babycakes: and then he brought me breakfast

babycakes: and i kiss you when you do that

babycakes: AND I FUCKING DIDIT GAAIN

Cady would’ve answered Janis’ flurry of texts by this point, but she’s laughing too hard too. They keep coming as Cady rolls around on the bed, clutching her aching stomach with tears in her eyes.

The chortles slow to chuckles after a while and she wipes the tears from her eyes with a last burst of giggles.

caddycat: My congratulations to the happy couple

babycakes: NHIS IS NOT HOW OUR WEDING DAY JS SUPOOED TO GO

caddycat: Is Dame mad?

babycakes: Sent a video: maybe ??

Cady opens this video of Damian, continuing his rant from the first.

“You’re supposed to be gay!” It begins. “I’m supposed to be gay! Today is literally your wedding day and you go smooching me! What resemblance do I bear to Caddy? Huh? She’s, like, two feet tall and maybe three pounds! Her hair is fucking red, Janis! Red! I am built like if a horse was a human and you say you kissed me because you thought I was her!”

Janis is giggling to herself in the background, but it sounds nervous. “It was habit! I swear!”

Damian is unphased. “I am supposed to be officiating your wedding in, like, eight hours! And here you go smooching the minister!”

“It’s a habit! Caddy and I kiss every morning when we first wake up!”

“Aww,” Damian coos before he gets back into it. “Anyway! Motherfucker! You can’t do this to me! Not today, do you have any idea how stressed I am?!”

The video ends there, sending Cady into another fit of giggles.

caddycat: He sounds mad

babycakes: are u mad ?

caddycat: Of course not

babycakes: oh

babycakes: good

caddycat: I think it’s cute

babycakes: motherfucker

caddycat: Hey now

caddycat: I’m about to be your wife

babycakes: hehe

babycakes: yeah

babycakes: can we go do that now?

caddycat: Thought you’d never ask

—-

Many, many hours later finds them doing exactly that. The two of them in long white dresses, hair and makeup done, all their friends and family dressed to the nines.

And the two of them, together.

“I now pronounce you wives. You may kiss. Each other, Janis.”

Janis barely snorts a laugh before grabbing her wife’s face and pulling her up to her lips. Cady smiles into the kiss and winds her arms around her wife’s waist. She’s smiling so hard she has to break it for a second. Janis smiles back before they lean back in.

“You are the best habit I’ve ever had,” she whispers when they break the second time.

Cady just smiles wider and pulls her in again.

[bigskydreaming]

I know some people just aren’t comfortable engaging with parts of canon where Bruce is abusive, because that’s just not the version of the character they’re here for, and I get that.

But the second a fic shows a willingness to address or even center itself around something like RHATO #25 or the Batman issue from King’s run where Bruce hits Tim......but DOESN’T acknowledge any of the many, MANY times that Bruce has been abusive to Dick on both sides of the Reboot, from post-Forever Evil to after Jason’s death post-Crisis and times in between?

Yeah, that’s when I see red.

Cuz that’s when it starts to look an awful lot like people are viewing abuse as some kind of narrative spice that they can selectively dole out only to those characters they like, while ignoring the times its applied to characters they don’t like because it might make them too sympathetic or interesting or what the fuck ever.

And I know people aren’t viewing abuse that way, right? Like surely there’s got to be some other explanation for why fics that heavily reference every single time Bruce has done something bad to Jason or Tim seem to act like Dick was just passively at Bruce’s side through all this, backing him up or else just being too naive to think Bruce could ever be like that, instead of like....actively a victim of their father’s abuse as well.

Look, its one thing for a certain character to not be your focal point or someone you’re particularly interested in, but you GOTTA look at the way this looks when you treat a character who has had instances of being a victim of Bruce’s abuse going back over thirty years, as like, being enabling, uncaring of or even party to Bruce’s abuse to the others in more recent years. Like, I focus a lot on the times he’s done it with Dick like in NW #30 or NTT #55 and just talk about Bruce and Dick in reference to those, because I’m trying to keep the focus limited to just Bruce and Dick for the purposes of whatever point I’m making, but the thing about that is.....I’m not CLAIMING that Bruce has never been abusive with any of the others, they’re just literally not even coming into the post because it isn’t about them. 

But the second you open things up to a full fic where things from all points of canon are being referenced in characters’ issues with Bruce, and you have a full cast list assembled.....it doesn’t work the same way because now you’re not just not talking about Dick’s experiences there because he’s not the focal point, now you’re actively writing over his experiences with a veneer of oh Dick and Bruce are fine, nothing like this has ever or would ever happen with them. That’s when you’re making for whatever reason a conscious CHOICE to depict certain kids of Bruce’s as victims at his hands, but NOT depicting the one who inarguably has been written that way the LONGEST and going back the furthest....because you simply don’t WANT him to be as sympathetic or the others or someone who can relate to them on this front, you want him to be an OBSTACLE to all that.

That’s shitty. I don’t know how else to tell you that that’s shitty. Please stop reserving abuse as some kind of ‘prize’ that’s only awarded to your personal faves’ backstories, because oh my god is that an offensive fucking take both coming and going. Not only are you unintentionally framing abuse as something ‘that can be quite good, actually, cuz it makes characters (people) interesting,’ you’re also again, as I said, seeing absolutely zero problem with taking a canon abuse survivor and making him part of the issue instead of someone similarly affected by it, simply because you don’t like him or find him interesting and you don’t want him to be the same as Jason or the others in this regard.

Frankly, this applies to the way this fandom treats a LOT of specific kinds of traumas. Like catch me side-eyeing the massive trend of Jason-as-Robin era fics that have Jason view Dick as spoiled, pampered, and harder to relate to or understand even than Bruce because god forbid one of those fics go with the juvie origin for Dick. I’ve more than once heard people say “I just don’t like that origin for Dick because I find it too angsty” and I gotta say, its a good thing that Cass and Damian’s origins aren’t too angsty to avoid and that nobody has ever extrapolated from what we do know about Jason and Tim’s childhoods to go into extremely elaborate and angsty detail about every possible facet of abuse or neglect they might have endured. 

I mean nah, this isn’t yet another way in which people deliberately depict Dick as just ‘not getting it’ because he hasn’t been through the kinds of stuff the others have, and its like. Okay but see thing is, he actually HAS, and you not acknowledging any of those instances is a CHOICE that you’re making as a writer, and as readers, we’re allowed to question those choices. We can look at what you’re presenting in the way that you’re presenting it, and think okay, but one of these things is not like the others, and the way you treat various characters as extremely sympathetic because of various aspects of their canon stories or their backstories while acting like the same could never ever be true of a character it absolutely has been true of on many different occasions....its super uncomfortable. And it kinda casts a shadow over everything you write into your story about abuse or specific other traumas because now there’s actually this implicit undertone where its like, okay but we actually only care about these things when they’re affecting someone or some character we LIKE, and that’s.....yeah. Not awesome.

I’ve ranted many a time before about the abuse apologism that runs rampant in this fandom, particularly in the vein of people refusing to acknowledge Bruce’s abusive actions (which again, I understand and am fine with up UNTIL...) but being perfectly comfortable sticking with any and all of Dick’s REACTIONS to literal abuse, but now deliberately separated from the inciting actions which makes it look like he’s just instigating shit or upset for no reason whatsoever. That’s literal abuse apologism, no matter what your intentions are, because hate to break it to people, but “Avoid Acknowledging An Abuser’s Actions And Flip The Focus To What The Abuse Victim Is Doing Wrong Instead” is literally chapter one of Abuse Apologism 101. But this shit? Abuse only happens to people I care about or find sympathetic already, because weirdly I seem to be able to make excuses for or overlook any instances of abuse that happen to someone I DON’T like?

That’s literally chapter two of the same damn book.

And good god but am I tired of people harping endlessly on about how much they care about these topics while blithely doing nothing BUT reinforce abuse apologism tropes and narratives in the process of shining a spotlight on the abuse that happens to personal faves and personal faves only.

And this definitely falls into the same pattern of people who happily talk about taking a match to canon and watching it burn at the exact same time they make the deliberate choices to depict Dick as the one Batkid who just doesn’t truly get the others and never will, or is unrelatable or all these other things.....

And its like hey guys? 90% of the stuff you hold against Dick Grayson or cite as your reasons for not liking him? When we say those aren’t canon its not because we’re trying to be the canon police always showing up to bust up your fun and be like no no no you naughty people, that never happened so you’re not allowed to write that. No. That’s not a thing. That’s not what that is. What it ACTUALLY is, is us pointing out all the times and ways where when Dick comes across as a giant asshole in fics, and we’re like why tho, we’re just literally trying to understand where your interpretation of his character is coming from, and you guys are like bitch its canon, and we’re like okay no but thing is, its really actually not. Its us just being like hey, the vast majority of the stuff you say you dont like about the guy or the times you leave out all the stuff that you cite as what you DO like about other characters, its like....

But anyway....

[fanghuas]

Hi!!! I’m just a bit curious if your have anything on the go right now! Like,, what your wips are or continued stories with upcoming chapters etc. Pwease share :)

OHO don't mind if I do! Thank you for giving me this opportunity to rant about my fics, bless you.

I have several WIPs that I'm working on (sporadically), but only one posted multi-chapter fic. That's because I've learned my lesson and want to have a good handle on the main plot before I post the others anywhere. The fic in question can be found here:

And occasionally I'll rant/whine about how the writing is going under the tag '100miles'. Coincidentally, the next chapter is almost ready. I just need to power through the last few hundred words.

Oh, if it counts, we also have the amnesiac Tim AU, which has two parts and might eventually get a third. You can find it here on tumblr:

Other than that, I think I had posted a list of WIPs a while back, but either tumblr ate it or I can't find it, so.

Hunger Games AU - I've got about 3~ chapters written and a pretty solid concept of what I want to happen. Main focus will be on Tim and Steph (they're the tributes from district 12 and you could make an argument for either of them being the "Katniss" of the story), but the batfam will feature heavily.

Post Spyral AU - I have talked about this before extensively, but this one centers around the batfam learning the circumstances under which Dick agreed to fake his death. And rightfully being horrified and giving him all the love and appreciation he deserves. Not much written yet for this one yet.

Jason Lives AU - Because I love suffering and making characters suffer also, Jason survives Ethiopia, but Bruce doesn't. Anything else I could say about it at this point would be a spoiler. I've got a couple thousand words written and a lot of ideas, but nothing solid yet. Mainly trying to figure out how the other characters are going to feature and what the most obvious changes will be.

Swimming AU - ?? Maybe. Might be a thing that will happen at some point. The idea was born bc I was on a swim team for 11 years and I have to vent somehow. I did start writing it but all I have so far is like 95 % angst and only 5 % swimming.

Dead Dick AU - Despite the name, he's only semi-dead. Characters who have died before (Jason, Damian) can communicate with him and think they're going mad with grief. It's very cheerful. Maybe I knew where I was going with it when I started writing it, but it's been a good few months and I honestly don't remember.

Jason & Damian LOA AU - Assuming I ever actually get around to writing it, this one will be separated into two main stories. Part 1 will deal with Jason and Damian meeting and bonding after Jason's resurrection, and will end with them escaping the League. Part 2 will deal with them travelling the world and eventually returning to Gotham. Additionally, there's a couple of ficlets set some time after those main fics on my AO3. Because I made the mistake of writing out of order and then I really wanted some validation. You can find them here:

And I'm pretty sure that's all? If I can find the other post I've made we'll know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's gone.

Thank you SO MUCH for the interest in my stories and for sitting through this rollercoaster, lmao. You can always ask me for more info about any of them if you're curious!! I seriously love to talk about them. It's easier than writing them.